Sunday, June 25, 2017

June is for Japanese Reading Challenge

June is here, (and almost gone) school is over and what can be better than one of my favorite challenges...? The Japanese Literature Challenge, hosted by Bellezzahere. I have lost count of the years I joined the other readers who love (or are about to love) Japanese literature, but for this summer, I have planned to read two great books.
The first one is by my favorite Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami and his non-fiction book written in 2015 "Meseria de romancier" ("The Novelist as a profession", not yet translated into English), published in 2016 by Polirom in the collection dedicated to him. The book contains 12 essays on what it means to be a writer and I am so eager to discover his take on this job and the advice he gives in order to become a successful novelist.
The second one is a Japanese thriller, "Malice", by Keigo Higashino (called the Japanese Stieg Larsson), written in 1996 and translated into English in 2014. The book belongs to the Police Detective Kaga series, including 9 other novels. It is going to be my first book by Higashino, well -known in Japan for his mystery novels. "Malice" is supposed to be a book which exploits murderous feelings and the reasons why a murder is committed, rather than the killer who did it. This definitely sounds interesting for a summer read!

2 comments:

Well, my friend, you know how I love Murakami! And I'm so happy/envious you get this book of his not translated into English yet! Higashino is also so fabulous! I'll have to look for Malice, as I haven't read that one yet. Great picks! Thanks for telling us about them, and for joining. xo

I am always happy to join this challenge. I think I chose Malice because of the beautiful cover. 40 pages into the novel I can say it was a good choice :) As for Murakami, I guess someone from this publishing house is quite a big fan of his work, translating his books before other countries such as the US. I am quite pleased with their choice :) Happy reading!